CharlieMcKenzie
Sr. Digital Product Designer
01 — About
Digital Product Designer with extensive experience managing cross-channel digital experiences in regulated financial services.
I'm open, curious, enthusiastic, and very much a people person. I'm drawn equally to creative challenges and analytical ones, which is probably why design made so much sense. It lets me flex both sides.
I'm an ENFP-A (a Campaigner), which means I tend to show up energised, collaborative, and always looking for the next interesting problem to solve. Outside of work I'm big on baking, food, games, and camping.
I've worked across financial services, not-for-profit, agency, startup environments, and I've led teams through rebrands, platform builds, and the kind of ambiguity that comes with many organisations.
Naarm/Melbourne
Australia
Currently loving everything Melbourne has to offer (even the weather!)
02 — Skills & Education
Education
Bachelor of Fine Arts
Interactive & Visual Design — Queensland University of Technology
Tools & Technologies
Key Competencies
UX Principles & Analytics
I translate business, regulatory and member needs into clear digital experiences. I help define priorities, align design initiatives to organisational goals, and balance long-term vision with practical delivery considerations. I help shape roadmap planning and ensure experience decisions support measurable member and business outcomes.
Team Leading & Mentoring
Culture is one of the most important things to me. Having a team that can rely on each other with trust and honesty has always enabled the best work I've ever seen. It allows for constructive criticism and support where needed. I strive to embrace or create this wherever I go. Leading and mentoring has been a key theme throughout my career and it goes hand in hand with improving team culture.
Governance & Risk
Working within a highly regulated environment, I proactively consider compliance, risk and accessibility requirements throughout the design process. I collaborate with stakeholders early to ensure solutions meet obligations while remaining intuitive and member-focused.
Stakeholder Management
My experience over the years has required me to manage many stakeholders needs, whilst creating effective and usable outcomes. I'm confident and capable when it comes to engaging and influencing senior stakeholders, collaborating, presenting, and even managing projects.
Product Design
From planning, research, UI design, to development, and delivery, I am constantly thinking of ideas and researching in the fast paced tech environment. I thrive off working with team members and key stakeholders to produce fresh, feasible, and functional concepts.
Prototyping & Testing
I have extensive experience creating low and high fidelity prototypes in Figma or with code and testing them in person or online. I also tailor them depending on their use case, whether for development needs or for user testing.
Problem Solving
The core of UX. Most of the satisfaction I get from my work is through the solving of problems. Through competitor research, systems planning, information architecture, to innovating new ways to tackle issues, every problem is an opportunity to improve.
Design Systems & Accessibility
I'm a huge fan of atomic design, and using its principles to create design systems to create points of truths for design. I have experience creating these systems in Figma and a keen interest in weaving accessibility and dev capability throughout the process.
03 — Experience
12+ Years
Industry Experience
Digital Product Designer
Australian Retirement Trust
As a Digital Product Designer, my role at Australian Retirement Trust (ART) involves leading the digital product design for various parts of ART's digital product offering, helping guide product owners to maximise digital product value and user experience. I work with cross-functional teams to develop a range of digital products and features, including web and native mobile applications. Alongside product owners and project managers, I lead the experience on key projects, ensuring the production of high-quality design components aligned with strategic objectives, guidelines, and timelines, while also exploring the desirability and usability of future digital offerings.
Co-Founder — UI/UX
Ulak — Collective Digital Agency
Due to COVID and a shift in organisation direction, our entire systems team at AIME got made redundant, so a few of us decided to start a collective who create digital experiences that put people & planet first. We used our digital skills to help organisations with purpose to increase their impact. Here I led the UX, UI, and front-end development of multiple projects on both a project and ongoing basis. My highlight here was working with Climate200 by building their website and working to elect numerous independent women across the nation, such as Monique Ryan, Kylea Tink, and Zali Steggall.
Head of UI/UX & Design
Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience
After working at an agency for roughly 4 years I moved into the non-profit sector. Here I worked with all key stakeholders and team members to deliver a rebrand, working design system, internal portal, onboarding flows, new website and updates, campaigns, and marketing collateral. I worked directly with the CEO, COO, and the systems team to produce these assets. I was also in charge of leading the design team, was responsible for hiring new staff, and actively mentored in this role.
UI/UX Lead
Orange Digital
At Orange I worked with a small team who serviced a broad range of clients (20+). It was my job to communicate with clients, scope and quote projects, research, create low and high fidelity prototypes, test these prototypes, and work with marketing and development in order to deliver projects that exceeded defined expectations. In addition to my duties I was part of the hiring team, ensuring skill and culture fits. I also managed the internship program, and mentored the successful interns to become fully fledged UI/UX designers.
04 — Work
Work
Samples
That's it!
Thanks for looking.
Say hello
…Charlie McKenzie
